[Zope-CMF] CMF Thoughts & Ideas (long!)

[Adrian Madrid]

> I'm working in isolation here (both physically, and
> in terms of being the
> only "techie" in the company!), so it's great to be
> able to bounce ideas
> around in this forum!

It's great for me too. Im the only one here that knows
html at all and talking about ideas gives me the
_illusion_ of a team ;-) 

> HTML gives you greater layout
> posibilities but doesn't it make it more complex for
> the searching (ie. including HTML tags in
> SearchableText)?
> 
> Jon>> At the moment I'm only using it for Portal
> Documents, and havent
> noticed any problems. I'm guessing SearchableText
> strips out the HTML Tags?

I checked it out and it doesn't. Try searching for
href for example.

> I've started doing the same with Windows (compiling
> a list of how-tos,
> useful products, mailinglist messages, etc, related
> to interfacing with
> Windows servers and apps) so if anyone has any
> useful info (especially
> Outlook/Exchange and Word), send it over and I'll
> add it to the list! <<Jon

I'm on the windows side too (not my personal choice,
though). I'm not a python guru by a long shot but when
I work with python or even html I like SciTE as my
editor. I want to try in the near future to use
postgresql in win2k so if you have any comments on
performance it would be apreciated.
 
> Jon>> Hear, hear! :-) I'm not sure if it's good Zen
> to do it this way, but
> it would be great for beginners and for rapid
> prototyping! <<Jon

I think Jeffrey's comment is right. I'm getting to
understand that if you want to _really_ customize the
CMF you need to invest the time and pain that involves
creating your own types. You'll reap the benefits
later 'cause you'll know where to look when things
don't go as supposed or your boss tells you "How about
if...".
 
> Jon>> That's why I'm kinda "sidestepping" the built
> in workflow at the
> moment, until I get my head round the requirements
> better! If an editor had
> included a Member's document on their page, then the
> Member retracted it to
> update it, you'd either get an error or a missing
> section on the page! And
> what if the Editor didnt want the new, updated
> version for some reason?
> <<Jon

I see your point. I guess you'd have to check for
status before publishing the link, although it might
not be possible due to the importance of the link in
the document. My take is to have links at the end and
take the risk. Nevertheless, something I have in mind
is to have live links that check for status of both
documents before showing up. 

> My approach is to have a 'location' field with the
> 'portal/a/b/c' form and pull the articles through a
> search in their respective folders.
> 
> Jon>> How do you control the sort-order if there's
> more than one doc per
> page? Or is that not relevant in your app?

It is sometimes relevant so I have a sort-order field
too. 

> Similarly, if one doc could be
> used on several different pages, I guess you could
> change your "location"
> field to a Lines property? <<Jon

It would be nice but it would make the logic a
nightmare. Meaning, I want to have a breadcrumbs part
and if you have multiple origins how do you decide
where is coming from now. In my case is not necessary
anyhow.

> 1. You can hide the complexity by having a
> "beginners" UI and an "experts"
> UI... that way, when your users become more
> sophisticated and demanding, you
> dont have to rewrite the underlying application,
> just present them with a
> more detailed UI!

Good point. Then you'll need to make some default
decisions for them.
 
> 2. I would see "authors/contributors" as people who
> submit articles, pics,
> etc, through their Member folders. Editor(s) would
> select those
> content-objects and slot them into the page(s) they
> are responsible for.
> Editors would probably be more HTML-savvy and want
> that fine-grained control
> of layout (though you can always hide it from those
> who dont!)<<Jon

I've been thinking about that myself but my
problem/ignorance lays in that how do you allow
editors to work on other people's work? Won't you run
into permissions/ownership problems? I'm not very good
in this area.

> I'm stil working on a composite object but my
> approach
> so far is having a dublin container with normal
> objects inside. The trick is to have SearchableText
> go
> through the contained objects and retrieve the
> apropiate text to search.
> 
> Jon>> Could you post any code/exaples to show how
> you do this? <<Jon

Sorry but nothing coded yet. I'm in the middle of
finals and won't get nothing done until that's out of
the way. See, I'm a lowly student working part-time
(violin solo in the background) that can only do so
much... ;-)



=====
---------------------------
Adrian Esteban Madrid
Benson Institute, Webmaster
Brigham Young University
---------------------------
adrian_esteban@madrid.com
===========================

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